Ways to Engage CSR Activities Around Healthcare

As we all know, India has a massive population, and the healthcare sector of India does not seem to be making any substantial progress. Although the private hospitals seem to be handling their patients pretty well, they are not affordable for most of the population. The Public hospitals are affordable, but extremely overcrowded and are not responsive enough to handle the patient load. The National Health Policy 2017 was approved by the Cabinet on the 15th of March 2017, with the objective to achieve the highest possible level of good health and well-being, through preventive and promotive healthcare orientation in all the development policies. This policy was launched in order to achieve universal access to good healthcare services, without having to face financial problems.

That said, companies need to find more ways to engage in CSR activities around healthcare, and here are a few possible themes, outlined in a way in which Indian Companies could move their focus to:

Improving primary care is one wat to look at things. Most of the attention of the firms in India is on the tertiary care, while the primary care is left neglected. Local youth could be trained to provide medicines for common treatments. Local pharmacies could be trained to provide medical help and medicines for common health issues. This would help the people get cheap and efficient health services. Therefore NGOs should take an initiative towards targeting firms to fund basic trainings for the people.

A massive 70% of the Indian population, still resides in rural areas, which have little or no health care facilities. Doctors could be given incentives to spend time in the rural areas by the firms, as the firms have access to better resources than that of the government.

As said in the above proposition, India has a massive population, and not enough doctors to be able to support a population in these numbers. Increasing the number of doctors, by reducing the cost of medical courses around India. The companies, having access to an ample amount of resources to help subsidize the cost of medical education for the capable youth of the country.

Reducing treatment costs. As we all know any medical procedure to be carried out is an extremely expensive process, and subsidizing that could go a long way in making medical help better and easier for the people. Firms could help in making that happen, by dedicating their resources to the said sector.

India is said to be a developing country, but just making new highways and offices, or increasing the GDP, or even demonetization is not going to cut it for the little guy. Smaller steps that could be taken would go a longer way in making a case for these people. Just the question of what matters more to the people that have the power to do this.